"A garden that pleases me is a garden…designed with deliberation" – David Hicks

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Month: May 2011

The Gardenias are blooming! The fragrance is amazing. I follow *Margaret Moseley’s advice and have a Gardenia planted every 25 feet or so where conditions allow. According to Margaret the fragrance will permeate the entire garden. And it does.

Every Gardenia in my garden came from a bouquet she gifted me when I lost a bidding war over a house. Turned out to be a good thing….that house was not right, and I got these fabulous plants!

The pot, as focal point, arrests the eye, then the curved path pulls you in…don’t you want to see what lies beyond?

The entrance above begs the question…”Do you have an invitation?”

Both have their place.

Hydrangea Season is perhaps my favorite time of year. It signals the beginning of summer and triggers memories of summers past to be savored in the peace of the garden.

Long before it was “The Mourning Bench” this area was ‘The Morning Garden’. Here, in the shade of a dogwood, with variegated Boxwoods on either side, I would bring my mug of coffee and notebook to plan the gardening day.

Originally, the bench was surrounded by hydrangeas, struck from cuttings, of the bouquets brought to me by Penny McHenry* on the occasion of my daughter’s wedding. I imagined sitting there embraced by all those hydrangeas and reveling in the happy memories of that time shared with family members and good friends.

Unfortunately, this site was windswept in the winter. Year after year the hydrangeas would die back to the ground. Although they produced luscious foliage every year, there were no flowers. A change needed to be made. I swapped them out for other hydrangeas… ‘Annabelles’ (Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’), these bloom on new wood (i.e. this years growth) so they were perfect for this area. The wedding hydrangeas were moved to a more protected space.

BLOOMING NOW:

(For names of the hydrangeas in this post, hover over photo with mouse.)